Semalt: WordPress Plugins – How Many Should You Use?

WordPress serves a big world population regarding its application. It is one of the best CMS out there. Many bloggers and eCommerce startups consider WordPress due to its reliability in what it delivers. Furthermore, WordPress websites come with a variety of themes and customizations to suit your website needs. One easy customization trick is through the use of plugins. Plugins are elements of your WordPress theme which can add value to the way your website responds.

Plugins help in many ways especially when you need a custom function. You should note that most WordPress plugins come as parts of themes. The changes may get lost when you change or modify your theme. However, some site-specific WordPress plugins can retain some of the code snippets in these cases. Alexander Peresunko, a leading expert of Semalt, outlines that the use of plugins can affect the performance of your theme.

How Many WordPress Plugins are 'too many'?

As seen above, plugins are PHP code snippets which add functionality to your current WordPress site. However, as you continue to mod your website, the response time of the system might begin slowing down. Heavily modded websites are too slow, impacting negatively to their search engine rankings. Like seen above, snippets work like adding lines of code to the overall website. In this regard, as a site increases code, it tends to become slow. Google uses website responsiveness as a ranking factor in their SERPs.

In a practical example, if you are using over 30 simple plugins, they might not alter the responsiveness of your website. In other instances, putting too much code on your site is what defines your response time. A plugin with too many snippets can have a similar impact on a website using many plugins. Just like website code, you need to mind about the code a site is running.

Which are the best plugins to use?

The decision to use a WordPress plugin depends on you. You might want to achieve a unique effect. In this case, it can be essential to make your custom PHP plugin. In the previous articles, there are many ways of developing simple plugins. You just need a technical know-how of the WordPress file structure. Similarly, you may need to be able to edit a PHP file using a simple notepad.

Plugins are not a must-have option. However, there are some essential plugins which can make your website better. Some of the must-have WordPress plugins include:

WordPress SEO by Yoast:

For people who want to optimize their site for search engine visibility, this plugin contains all essential aspects of SEO. From keyword search to meta description optimization, there are many instances where people make useful plugins.

WP-DBManager:

This is an all in one plugin which helps a person manage essential aspects of your database. For instance, you can be able to add or repair your database. You can also backup your website to roll back changes in case something goes wrong.

W3 Total Cache:

This plugin can help your website develop traffic. It helps retain a user who has once visited by giving them more ads on your website.